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In the 1950's 36.4% of the white population was over 25 and had a high school diploma. That number sounds pretty low, especially because today that number is at 92%. Parents would spend $215 on their kids to get them an education which is equal to $2122 dollars today. Being a High School drop out at the time was not uncommon either, but for Biff it was not dropping out of High School, it was failing out. When Biff unfortunately fails out of high school, his family life is turned upside down. His relationship with his father gets worse by the day, mainly because of the high standards his Dad set for him that he can't achieve. His dad set him up to do bad by encouraging him not to study and that life will come easy to him. Their relationship deteriorates as Biff tells his Dad, Willy, he is not amazing and neither is Willy.
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A basic family in the 1950's could afford a television and a nice living area, but this was different for the struggling Loman family, just getting by off of help from their neighbor Charlie and the little money Willy made from being a salesman. Willy pleads when he says, "Charley, look...With difficulty: I got my insurance to pay. If you can mange it-I need a hundred and ten dollars," (Miller 96). After Willy lost his job he went form a low income family to a no income family. This was rock bottom for him, and hope for the American dream for himself and his family deteriorated
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We know in the book, Biff has a manual labor job in the south, not exactly the American dream, and especially not the dream that his father had set for him. Labor jobs were not viewed as being for someone that was very successful. Willy explains to Linda, "How can he find himself on a farm? In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it's good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it's more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!" (15-16). This was a time of urbanization and prosperity in the cities. When people thought of the American dream they would instantly think of being a businessman. Door to door salesman was also a fading job as they no longer needed to advertise like this. This affected Biff's relationship with his Dad and Willy's relationship with his family. It was a negative impact in the fact
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In the 1950's the men were the ones who stereotypically had the jobs. This was while the women stayed home and took care of the kids. This was true for most family's 1950's and in The Death Of The Salesman. Willy, Charlie, and Bernard have the jobs in the family, although some are successful and some are not. Willy expects his sons to follow this tradition of the men doing the work and with that come pressure and responsibility for his sons. We know this specific story is about them, but most family's in the 1950's followed this same pattern and had the men take on the role of providing for the family.
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In the novel, Willy seeks to find The American Dream by living up to the standards of his older brother Ben. He is convinced that Ben was able to find success in Africa without having to put forth any effort and this is displayed when he says, "What’s the mystery? The man knew what he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle, and comes out, the age of twenty-one, and he’s rich! The world is an oyster, but you don’t crack it open on a mattress!" (41). He has false knowledge about his big brothers success. After seeing how wealthy he ended up, he assumes that he would have been better off if he had traveled with him to "Alaska" or Africa. What Willy does not understand is that a great deal of effort and hard work was put forth by Ben in order to pave his way to success.
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In the 1930s and 1940s it was necessary for both the husband and wife to be the breadwinners of the family due to the hardships that most families were facing under The Great Depression. After WWII occurred, the cultural shift took a step back so that men were yet again the only bread winners of the family. This common 1950s family functioned so that the father was expected to work and bring home a paycheck, and the wife was responsible for cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children. Women were bound to their homes while men contained the ultimate freedom of having a job and being able to provide for their family as they desired. In 1940, 5% of women ages 25-29 had a bachelors degree or higher. This only increased to 7.5% from 1940-1960. This shows that as great progress began to occur for women, they were held back and kept at a stalemate throughout the entire decade of the 1950s. In the novel, Willy is free to have an affair with The Other Woman in Boston. He is also free to take his own life, and leave his wife without a source of support and job. Also, Linda is often seen working to meet her husbands every desire. This is shown when Linda says, "Take an aspirin. Should I get you an aspirin? It'll soothe you," (14).